The digital equilibrium : how governments, corporations, and individuals bargained the regulation of online speech in the European Union

Abstract

The Digital Equilibrium: How Governments, Corporations, and Individuals Bargained the Regulation of Online Speech in the European Union presents a novel approach to online speech regulation in the European Union. Through a game-theory-inspired method, the thesis walks the reader through over twenty years of public, corporate, and individual regulatory bargaining, tracing the objectives and strategies used by each of those players to obtain different regulatory equilibria in the online speech landscape. The thesis proposes a chronological evolution of how that bargaining game evolved by focusing on specific moments of regulatory equilibrium — the so-called Stages of the Digital Equilibrium — in which the balance (or imbalance) is more easily observed. By critically analyzing this evolution and the relative position of each actor during each Stage, this thesis answers the foundational questions — who, what, and why of online speech governance in the EU — while proposing models for the future. These Stages of Equilibria are divided into three moments, corresponding to this thesis’ core sections: i) The Original Digital Equilibrium, ii) the Disequilibrium, and iii) the New Digital Equilibrium. In each of these Stages, an analysis is carried out as to how the players have promoted their regulatory positions by either cooperating with or threatening the remaining regulatory actors. This allows for a detailed explanation of why Member States or the European Union proposed a given piece of legislation or why online platforms such as Facebook or Twitter decided to change their content moderation rules and procedures. It provides a global picture — often missing — beyond classic studies of platform regulation or online speech governance. Finally, and most importantly, this thesis shows how individuals have consistently been ignored in this regulatory bargaining game. This thesis’s ultimate normative conclusion is that the best Digital Equilibrium is one in which individuals assume a prominent role in its governance, one which cannot be achieved solely through voice mechanisms. To solve this problem, the last chapter of this thesis proposes a new model for online speech governance — the Curators Model — a middleware-inspired solution in which individuals are empowered via algorithmic market choice.